A federal judge last week denied a bid by C.R. Bard (NYSE:BCR) to delay a raft of product liability lawsuits filed over its pelvic mesh products, shooting down Bard’s contention that the judge’s prior comments prejudiced the jury pool.
Judge Joseph Goodwin of the U.S. District Court for Southern West Virginia is supervising a multi-district litigation involving thousands of the lawsuits filed over Bard’s pelvic mesh devices for pelvic organ prolapse and stress urinary incontinence. Last month Goodwin’s comments during a hearing, urging Bard to settle the mesh lawsuits, drew widespread publicity.
"I can’t imagine a corporation facing potentially billions of dollars in verdicts wouldn’t find it advisable to try to achieve a settlement for a much lesser sum," Goodwin said at the Dec. 9 hearing. "I base that billions of dollars business on some of the rather large verdicts that we’ve had.
"I find it to be a material fact that 5 different state forums have, on average, returned verdicts of over a million dollars per plaintiff," the judge said. "If I were a stockholder of any of these companies, I would be materially interested in the fact that there have been multiple million-dollar verdicts for individual plaintiffs.”
Bard argued that the widespread coverage of Goodwin’s comments make it impossible to hold a fair trial as scheduled for February.
"Even if the court instructs jurors and potential jurors to ignore the media and avoid internet research, the effect of those instructions is only prospective. It cannot immunize the jury against the prejudicial information its members may have already seen. Only time may dissipate that taint," the company wrote in a court filing.
Goodwin disagreed, dismissing the motion in a Jan. 9 decision that Bard failed to show cause.
"I have carefully considered defendant’s Motion and find that defendant has not demonstrated good cause, as is required by Rule 16 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, for the relief sought in the motion," he wrote.
In November a jury in West Virginia awarded 4 women $18.5 million for injuries they said were caused by Boston Scientific‘s (NYSE:BSX) Obtryx device for stress urinary incontinence, including $4 million for "gross negligence." That verdict came a week after a Miami jury awarded $26.7 million to 4 women implanted with the company’s Pinnacle device for pelvic organ prolapse.
Bard last October inked a settlement deal for some 500 of the cases that’s reportedly worth about $21 million.